How a Pune man ended up as a ‘cyber slave’ in a Myanmar scam compound

Pune: After two months in captivity, Sahil prepared himself for the fight. A day before, he had punched one of his captors in the face. He knew they would retaliate. They did. His beating would last eight days.“They hung me upside down, hit me and starved me. Every two days, I was given some rice and fish balls to eat. That was all. I think they drugged me to stop my screams. But I refused to cheat people,” Sahil says.The 34-year-old business administration graduate from Pune was among a batch of Indians airlifted from Myanmar in Jan by the Indian Air Force, all victims of human-trafficking rings that had forced them to work in “scam compounds”, town-sized complexes on the lightly policed Thailand-Myanmar border, from where gangs run the most sophisticated online frauds, including digital arrests and crypto cons.Sahil, who asked he be identified only by his first name, says he wants everyone to hear his story. “People should know such places exist, from where you may never leave. Do not click on something online that feels too good to be true.”Last year, the UN said Myanmar’s scam compounds rake in nearly $40 billion in annual profits.Sahil was trapped through an Instagram ad, about a job at a “luxury hotel in Thailand” for $4,000 a month or about Rs 3,70,000 then. He says he didn’t think twice. It was late Sept, 2025, and he was back in Pune after a three-year stint in Sierra Leone, where he worked sales for a liquor company. The job didn’t pan out, and he was in dire financial straits. “I can’t tell you how desperate I was for a job,” Sahil tells TOI.“When I saw the ad, I thought it was the best thing that had happened to me.” He filled the online form.Two days later came a phone call from a person who identified himself as a rep from a Thai placement agency. What he said would make Sahil’s heart soar. “All they wanted me to do was buy a ticket to Bangkok. The rest, the caller said, would be ‘taken care of’.”Sahil packed his bags, paid Rs 10,000 for the plane ticket, said goodbye to his parents and took off for Bangkok on Sept 25. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for one tiny niggle: he still didn’t know the name of the hotel he would be working at.But things would get stranger upon arrival in Bangkok. Waiting to pick him up was a Lexus and a driver. “Imagine going from looking for a job to being picked up in a Lexus. I could hardly believe my eyes,” says Sahil.The ride in the fancy car, however, would be short. Sahil says they switched at least 17 cars along the way. “This is when I felt the first pangs of suspicion. I kept asking the drivers why they were changing cars, but I was assured everything was okay. Unfortunately, my travel SIM hadn’t kicked in so I was unable to call anyone.”The only good news was the 3,000 Thai baht (Rs 8,700) that he was handed upon arrival in Bangkok by the first driver, to cover “expenses”. He would stay at a hotel for two days before another car arrived.Inside this vehicle was a passenger, a man from Dehradun. The driver of this car said they were headed to Mae Sot in Thailand’s west, a crucial transit point into Myanmar. From here, things would become much worse for Sahil.BlindfoldsThe car with the two Indians soon stopped along the banks of a large river, where to Sahil’s utter shock, the driver pulled out a gun and a large knife. “He forced us to wear blindfolds. I felt extreme panic. We had no choice, but to obey him,” Sahil says.They were ordered onto a boat, which after 10 minutes reached a disembarking point. When the blindfolds lifted, Sahil’s jaws dropped: in front of him was a large group of people, all with the same stunned look he had on.“I think it was Sept 27 or 28. We were a group of about 60 people, who were then told to walk. We must have trekked for 60 km. Along the way, I had to discard all non-essential clothing, my shoes and bags. I couldn’t carry the weight. We tried to reason with our escorts, but they threatened us.”A day later, after a short stay at a hotel to clean up, the group were taken to their destination — KK Park, near Myawaddy, one of the world’s largest and most notorious scam compounds. At one point, it held 2,000 individuals, all forced into “cyber slavery”, working up to 14 hours a day.It was Sept 29, 2025. Sahil says his captors immediately took away passports and all identification documents. “I was holed up inside a room for three days. On the fourth day, I was taken to what looked like a call centre.”In that office, he saw people from all over the world who had been lured to KK Park through social media ads, illegal agencies and agents.“There were people from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and several other countries. I saw scores of Indians; several of them girls in their 20s who had dreamt of careers abroad. My heart sank,” says Sahil.Pig butcheringSahil didn’t have to wait too long to find out what his job would be at KK Park. It involved a term he had heard only a few times before — “pig butchering”, an investment scam that “fattens” victims with false promises of big profits before “butchering” them, financially.Sahil says he was ordered to scan social media profiles of Americans, establish contact with victims and pass their details to “seniors”, who would call these people up with “opportunities” in crypto investments. Up to 15 people were being targeted in a single day, Sahil says.“I realised I was stuck, involved in obvious criminal activity. I then did the only thing I could do. I refused to work.”Sahil says he began to take naps during work hours and refused to take calls — much to the annoyance of his captors. “They would loudly call my name on the work floor, telling me to stop sleeping. But I ignored them. I was adamant; there was no way I was stealing money.”On Oct 21, Sahil’s captivity at KK Park ended when the Myanmar army raided the compound, seizing Starlink internet devices and dismantling most of KK Park’s infrastructure, including a four-storey hospital and, weirdly, a karaoke bar.Sahil says his captors fled into the nearby jungle to escape the raid, taking along with them three-four Pakistanis, six Bangladeshis, 40-50 Indians, and him. “It’s in the jungle that things really heated up between us and them,” says Sahil. “A woman came up to us and said we would soon be put to work in another company, with better pay, as much as 60,000 Thai baht (more than Rs 1,70,000), but we refused. She threatened us saying our heads would be chopped off or we’d be sold to organ harvesters. We still refused.”He says they were taken to another scam compound in Myawaddy called Apollo Park, which had an alarming addition to its name on a board. “In Mandarin, it read, ‘Apollo Park, Pig Slaughter Farm’. It’s that brazen over there. These criminals operate with absolute impunity.”By now, it was mid-Nov, and Sahil was getting increasingly anxious. “At Apollo Park, I managed to get a phone and called home. My parents were worried, and told me they were in talks with police. They asked me to stay safe.”Little did Sahil know he would soon be in the fight of his life. “I think it was Nov 15. I was in a restaurant at Apollo Park for lunch when I accidentally brushed against this Chinese employee who began to yell. He grabbed my collar and slapped me. I didn’t waste a second. I bunched my fist and aimed for his face.”Chaos ensued. A translator who knew Hindi and English attempted to negotiate peace, but Sahil refused to relent. “I was furious. I took a look around and saw most of the guys ganging up on me were thin and scrawny. So I fought.”It didn’t go well. The next day, his captors dragged Sahil into a solitary room where he was tortured for eight days. “A guard would come in, beat me and leave. They said they would take my eyes out, but I didn’t change my mind. I told them again and again, ‘I will not cheat people’.”Sahil says it may have been his parents’ prayers that kept him alive. “I was ready to die. I remember yelling, ‘tum sabko main maroonga’.”Sahil eventually passed out from the intense pain and captors would dump him in front of a local hospital where it took doctors a week to fix his injuries. While at the hospital, he pleaded with staff not to send him back to Apollo Park. They guided him to a nearby detention centre, which he reached on foot, still clad in his bloodied clothes.At the detention centre, part of a dismantled scam compound, Sahil worked with other Indians to gather emails and phone numbers of authorities they could contact for a rescue. For 45 days, the detainees kept writing to officials in Thailand, Myanmar and India.He still doesn’t know what mechanisms began to work, but around 4am on Jan 7, word spread they were all being taken to Mae Sot. For the first time in three months, Sahil felt hope. In Mae Sot, local officials hurriedly prepared travel documents. Sahil was issued a ‘white passport’, enough to qualify for repatriation. An IAF plane took off from a nearby airport around noon and by evening on Jan 7, Sahil and his fellow Indians were in Delhi, where officials were stunned by his condition.“I was the only one with such injuries. Those officials were kind. They let me rest and were courteous during my debriefing. They wanted to know all the details: how I ended up in Myanmar, what I did there, and how I got out.”Sahil is still shaken. He says there’s pain when he works out, and he is once again jobless. “But I would rather be jobless than make money through such means,” he says.His final interview with authorities was back home in Nigdi. “We recorded Sahil’s statement to understand how people are being lured into cyber slavery,” says deputy commissioner of Pimpri Chinchwad police, Shivaji Pawar.A CBI official says efforts are on to dismantle networks that are trafficking people to scam compounds. It’s unclear how many Indians are still trapped in these complexes, but over 6,700 of them have been brought back since 2022.